[Dixielandjazz] FW: "As Time Goes By"

[Bill Haesler]

Dear Friends,
This interesting 'New York Daily News' article via Denis King from the
Australian-Dance-Bands list.
Kind regards,
Bill. 
________________________________________________________________

Play It Again
Herman Hupfeld's greatest hit
by David Hinckley
New York Daily News, May 9, 2005

You must remember this
A kiss is just a kiss
A sigh is just a sigh
The fundamental things apply
As time goes by
        -- Herman Hupfeld, 1931

The most memorable song in the most memorable movie of all time was actually
written for a Broadway clunker years earlier.

"As Time Goes By" was the one seemingly random bolt of perfection for Herman
Hupfeld, who never wrote a full movie or Broadway show in his life and whose
second most successful song was "When Yuba Played the Rhumba on the Tuba."

It showed up in the 1942 film "Casablanca" only because it was part of the
never-produced play on which "Casablanca" was based. Musical director Max
Steiner would have replaced it with one of his own tunes except that Ingrid
Bergman was already in a faraway place shooting her next film -- and had cut
her hair anyway -- so a reshoot was too much trouble.

Meanwhile, people who only know "As Time Goes By" from "Casablanca" have
never heard the song itself, because the movie only uses the chorus.

Other than that, its path to immortality was routine.

Herman Hupfeld was born in 1894 in Montclair, N.J., son of a church
organist. He joined the Navy and spent World War I playing saxophone in the
Navy band. After that he made his living as a composer, placing a few minor
songs in films. He kept an eye on Broadway, too, and in the summer of 1931
he made contact with the Shuberts, who were cobbling together a musical
called "Everybody's Welcome."

Sammy Fain did most of the music, but for one open slot the Shuberts found
it just as easy to take Hupfeld's "As Time Goes By."

Sung by Frances Williams, the song began with three stanzas of wordplay that
sounded like a poor man's Ira Gershwin:
This day and age we're living in
Gives cause for apprehension
With speed and new invention
And things like a fourth dimension...
Yet we get a trifle weary
With Mr. Einstein's theory...

When it got to the chorus, happily, it turned simple and elegant.

But one good chorus wasn't enough to sell critics on the show, which opened
Oct. 13 to bad notices and limped through 139 performances before shutting
down. Those put out of work on closing day included the Jimmy and Tommy
Dorsey Orchestra and young actress Harriette Lake, who would later rename
herself Ann Sothern.

Hupfeld's song, though, attracted enough attention that it was recorded
twice, by Jacques Renard on Brunswick and Rudy Vallee on Victor. Neither was
much of a hit, the Depression having creamed record sales, but those who
enjoyed it included one Murray Burnett, a young Cornell student who found it
relaxing to play at his fraternity house.

Burnett went on to become a teacher at Commercial High in New York, and on
summer break 1938 he visited Europe to see firsthand that continent's
troubles. There he was moved by the plights of refugees and resisters. There
also he was mesmerized by the music of a black piano player working in a
Paris cafe. 

Upon returning to New York, he teamed up with a friend, Joan Alison, to
write "Everybody Comes to Rick's," a play based on what he had seen in
Europe. Prominent in the script was a black piano player playing the song
Burnett had loved back at Cornell, "As Time Goes By."

The play was optioned by Broadway's Martin Gabel and Carly Wharton, but was
never produced, partly because Rick's love interest, a conniving
Americannamed Lois Meredith, was deemed too hard and unsympathetic.

So the play waited -- and waited. And then the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor,
and Warner Bros., looking for patriotic war-related prospects, bought it.

Adjustments were made. Lois became the softer Ilsa. But "As Time Goes By"
survived, despite Steiner's fear it was a stiff pop song, not jazzy enough
for Sam the piano man.

Once Warner Bros. boss Hal Wallis vetoed the substitution, Steiner dutifully
and skillfully incorporated riffs from "As Time Goes By" throughout his
score. It was Rick's favorite song. Rick was, after all, a New Yorker
himself. Perhaps he had seen "Everybody's Welcome."

"Casablanca" opened on Nov. 26, 1942, at New York's Hollywood Theater, not
far from where "As Time Goes By" had first played 11 years earlier.

This time the critics went wild, and the only reason a half-dozen recordings
of "As Time Goes By" were not immediately rushed into production was that
the ongoing musicians' strike made it impossible.

Instead, the 1931 Renard and Vallee records were reissued. Vallee's entered
the "Hit Parade" charts in March 1943 and stayed there until August, racking
up a month at No. 1.

However the song and the movie came together, it was the start of a
beautiful friendship.

It's still the same old story
A fight for love and glory
A case of do or die...
_________________________________________________________________